Hi, I've been torn between wanting to learn a few languages.. Lua for Adobe Lightroom, Javascript for Dopus, and a backburner interest in getting back into some C/C-variants (from my 80's/90's 'Hello World' type of stuff).
Several months ago I tried learning some basic Javascript for Dopus, but could never quite get the connect between the language and Dopus's rich and overwhelming API feature set. However, I do like how Jscript seems to resemble much of what I remember from C, those umpteen years ago.
A few months went by with me likely forgetting much of what I learned about Jscript. And recently (over the past few days) I've been trying to learn some Lua for Lightroom. I've also come to learn that, like Jscript, Lua is also said to be Turing complete... Which got me thinking "maybe Lua could be used for Dopus instead of Jscript" - cut out the 'middleman' so-to-speak, for now at least.
I saw something about Dopus being capable of using any ActiveX [scripting] language, but I have no clue what that actually means...
So can Lua somehow be used with the rich, extensive API that Dopus offers?
I'm not sure if there is an ActiveScripting version of Lua but, to be honest, using anything but the built-in JScript or VBScript will just cause you more pain than you would avoid, since it would have quirks and none of the examples or people who can help you would be in the same language (and it would mean any scripts you wrote could not be used by anyone else without also installing a special version of Lua, if one exists).
The stuff you do in one scripting language or another, at least in the context of the simple scripts you'd write for Opus or Photoshop, are usually pretty basic things like simple loops, so you don't need to be an expert in Javascript to write an Opus script. The knowledge you already have form Lua is all transferable.
The hard part is the API, not the language, but that isn't that hard either really (at least compared to most APIs).
That's what I was afraid of. Of course I already had the concern of not having examples or people that could help with Lua scripting.
Although the thing behind all this is due to a Lightroom plugin author having abandoned his plugin.. Thank goodness he had the thoughtful foresight of compiling his Lua so it couldn't relatively easily be changed.
The reason for wanting to script something in Opus was to do recompression and renaming of Lightroom backup catalogs outside of Lightroom - to at least do that part of what the abandoned plugin did.
So considering that it would also be nice if I could write my own plugin to take on the full functionality of the now defunct Lightroom Backup plugin... My current thinking is that maybe I should first take on learning a bit of Lua, to solve the original problem outright.
Although I know I do want to eventually figure out some javascript, for other reasons that are Opus related. And I think you're right... Learning Opus's overwhelmingly rich API is going to be the hardest part.. It's what tripped me up in the first place! ... Dopus sure has come a LONG way since its Amiga roots!
